Succulent in a Skull
by Skierunner
Summary: "It's a ceramic skull painted in obnoxious colors, with a small sign embedded on the side reading "Growing Out of My Mind". On the list of things you should not gift a mental health inpatient, this would definitely be at the top." A series of visits between Gabriel and one of the original Overwatch team members. Sad ending.


"Would you like some help, sir?"

Gabriel grunts and shakes his head, waving the helpful shopkeep away. A bouquet of flowers would be weird, right? It could be perceived as romantic or, at the very least, overly-invested. Maybe a single flower? Scratch that, too perfunctory. Don't know what kind of flowers she likes anyhow. He has a feeling she's the kind of person who would love a cactus, but he's absolutely positive that she's also the kind of person that should, under no circumstance, ever possess a cactus. Although, maybe he's on to something with hardy plants. He was thinking flowers to bring some kind of life and color to her bland living space, but perhaps they'd die too quickly to fulfill their purpose for long.

"You got any of those desert plants? Not cactus." He knows damn well they're called succulents.

"Do you mean succulents, sir?" Obviously. "We have a few, you could find a larger variety at our main branch—"

"Whatever you've got will be fine." Pause. "As long as the leaves aren't pointy."

"How is this one, sir?" Gabriel narrows his eyes at the plant in the shopkeep's hands. Few inches high, bulbous green leaves, nondescript pot.

"Plant's fine. You got any pots that are more… festive?"

There are a few. There are owl pots, corgi pots, and wildly colored pots, but Gabriel's gaze slides over them all, attention instantly ensnared by one in the middle. It's a ceramic skull painted in obnoxious colors, with a small sign embedded on the side reading "Growing Out of My Mind". On the list of things you should not gift a mental health inpatient, this would definitely be at the top—after the obviously unsafe things, of course. Like cactuses. Cacti. Whatever.

Point being, Liao is going to love it.

/

"I love it!"

Gabriel doesn't try to hide his smug grin as he presents the plant to her. "Of course you do, _I_ got it for you."

Liao carefully lifts the pot from Gabriel's hands, gently rotating it around to admire the skull from every angle—and freezes as she catches sight of the sign. There is a brief, glimmering moment of suspense, where Gabriel thought that maybe he really _should_ have listened to his inner Jack and bought the dreadfully plain pot, but then Liao's smile breaks through like the sun through clouds and her guffawing laughs fill the room.

"Holy shit, where did you find this? Did you make it?"

"Please, you've seen my terrain models. I have zero artistic talent when there isn't a needle involved."

"True!" Clearly pleased with the gift, Liao places it in a prominent spot on her otherwise bare windowsill as Gabriel makes himself comfortable in a chair. She turns to face him, still eye level with him even though he's sitting, thanks to her borderline diminutive stature. "So, how's life for Commander Reyes?"

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "You may not have heard," Sarcasm. She's heard. Everyone's heard. It's been the number one headline for a week. "But I am no longer a commander of anything. Jack got the gig."

"Bullshit! Jack might be the ring leader for the pony show, but I know the UN wouldn't let you go for nothing."

"Nope, it's all true." It isn't. She's right. Jack might have control of Overwatch, but Gabriel isn't out completely. The UN has stood up a secondary organization, designed to cover the clandestine operations Overwatch can no longer accomplish with every watchdog on the globe keeping close tabs on them. Liao is definitely not supposed to know that, though. "I'm taking my old bones to some middle-of-nowhere post in the western US." Partially true. Blackwatch's HQ is under construction somewhere in the US, he just isn't sure where yet. "I've got ten years to retirement and I have every intention of taking it easy."

"You say that as if you've done any sort of work the last five years."

"What the hell was the Crisis? A Quinceañera?"

"All me."

"Are you serious."

"And Captain Amari."

"How would Wilhelm feel about this?"

"Fine, Reinhardt, too. And Torbjorn. Maybe. Mostly his turrets, though."

"And Jack?"

"Nope. Not Jack-ass. And not you either!"

He presses his hands over his heart, not quite managing to erase his smile long enough to act wounded. "Ugh, Liao, you gut me!"

"You think I would forget that time you sent me through the sewers to infiltrate the Anubis god-program?"

"You were the only one small enough to fit, they were retention drains not sewers, and you volunteered."

Her expression suddenly turns wistful. "Yeah, I'd do it again, too."

Gabriel shifts awkwardly. "So, you've heard the boring shit I've been up to, what about you? Less padding in the rooms than I expected."

She snorts. "Think they're saving it to donate to your ego. Nah, it's actually pretty great here. Food's decent even without hot sauce, there's always hot water, and electricity never goes out! Neighbors are pretty crazy though."

"Imagine that. Crazy neighbors in an insane asylum."

"Hey, I'm self-admitted, I figure that gives me some ground to stand on!"

"I'm pretty sure that you're admitted _at all_ puts you on an equal playing field." She shrugs and the conversation stalls for a bit. "Why did you self-refer, anyway?"

"Oh, I was hoping you would ask! It's genius, really, I'm not sure why more people aren't doing it. So get this: this is a _mental health treatment center._"

"Yes," he draws out. "I understand that part."

"Do you? Who needs mental health treatment?"

"Uh, I don't know. Guess it depends on the person."

"Exactly! It depends on _the person_! Bots don't need mental health treatment! So I can sit in here, have lovely talk therapy sessions, and work on deciphering code _without_ worrying about bots trying to kill me!"

"O-kay, there's a lot to unpack there. First, you know the Crisis is over, right?"

"Maybe the conventional warfare is over, but the Crisis is just beginning. Next we'll see the bots split into two sides, one trying to assimilate and the other will develop an insurgency. Problem is, you can't tell the difference. And it got me thinking: why would there be a difference? They all started with the same code. But then it hit me—there _is_ no difference! They're _all_ starting an insurgency, only some are open about it to cover for the ones handling the subterfuge and psyops. That's why I'm in here! No bot has a reason to be in here, so I can work safely."

Gabriel is vaguely aware that he is openly staring at her. He'll admit that when he heard Liao—brilliant, cunning, exuberant Liao—had checked herself into a ward, he assumed she was having difficulty managing Crisis-related trauma. And in a way, listening to her rant about perceived threats, he supposes that she is. He can relate. The paranoia, anticipating an attack that will never come now that the Crisis is over. Trying to reach for his weapon when he first wakes up, keeping his head on a swivel at all times, looking back to check on his battle buddy and not finding them… it was an adjustment and he could understand why Liao might be having trouble coming out on the other side. She'll get through it in time, just like he did, and her health team will help. Lord knows he's no professional. Anything he says might actually be a detriment to her. So, instead of trying to discount all of her fears, he grumbles. "Most people just get off the grid. The US practically has a pseudo-secessionist movement going- all sorts of people swearing off any kind of electronics."

She pulls a face. "Ugh, no. I love my electronics! Besides, I need access to computers to keep analyzing the code."

"Alright, that's the second time you've vaguely referenced "the code" so I assume you're dying for me to ask about it."

"Aw, Reyes, you ladies' man, you know exactly what a girl wants! You know how I wasn't allowed to read the Nietzsche Virus code 'cause of my eidetic memory?"

"Oh no… tell me you didn't. No, really. _Tell_ me you didn't. I need to maintain my plausible deniability."

"Alright, this is me telling you that I have absolutely never read the Virus code and also never transcribed it into a journal which I most certainly did not bring with me and is not currently under my mattress."

"_Liao_."

"Don't worry! I have it encrypted, in a manner of speaking."

"So, what, you're studying the Virus?" Blood drains from his face as a thought seized hold. "You're not making a… an omnic-nuke, are you?"

"What do you take me for, an amateur? As much as I prefer living in a world without bots, I know better than to do that. Code never works quite like you expect it to, and I don't want to risk wiping out the world's infrastructure or _worse_, the internet." She places her hand on his knee, gripping it tightly. "Think of the cat pictures lost to the ages!"

"Yes. Think of the cat pictures. Not the accumulated knowledge of humanity. The cats."

"Also, I've seen what those farmers in Oz ended up doing. Their plan for the greater good backfired spectacularly and made the Outback uninhabitable. Well, less inhabitable than it already was. Which isn't really saying much, I suppose. Hm. Maybe there _are_ merits to an om-bomb."

"Two things: please never refer to a weapon of mass destruction as an "om-bomb" again, and two,_ you are absolutely forbidden from creating a WMD of any kind_."

"I am resistant to your terms, but I am in no position to negotiate."

He narrows his eyes at her suspiciously. Liao always argued, even when there was nothing to argue. "Why?"

"You're the only visitor I've had that's not family! I'm not going to jeopardize that."

He draws back in surprise. "What? No one else from the team has visited?"

"Nah, not yet."

"Well—that is—they must be busy." He nods as he quickly runs over the roster in his head. "Yeah, Ana is taking some mandated leave to visit her family—you know Fareeha turned thirteen? Jack just got control of Overwatch, of course, so he's been overwhelmed. Lindholm is with _his_ daughter, apparently she didn't even remember him when he came back. I'm actually not sure what Wilhelm is up to—"

"Reyes, it's fine! People have lives, they don't have to revolve around me. I'm just grateful that you don't have a life, so you can visit me whenever I want."

"I have a life! You just happen to be in it."

"Long may it be so, haha!"

/

Liao has three succulents on her windowsill now. It's not like he brings one every time he visits—her room would be a jungle if he did. It's just that the first one outgrew its skull planter, so he had to buy a larger one (a zombie with a space in its gut for the plant). Then he missed the skull planter so much that he bought her another succulent for it. Then _that_ one outgrew the skull and the process repeated itself.

"So," he begins, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. "I heard you assaulted one of your caregivers."

"Heard you killed some kids out west." She spits back.

He frowns at her. "We're upgrading the server stacks this weekend. You won't be able to get intel on our ops anymore. Not that you ever should have had it to begin with."

"I'm not hearing you deny anything."

"I can hardly talk about anything in an unsecured location."

Liao picks at a thinning patch of her hair. "Forget who you're talking to? I do bug sweeps twice a day and I managed to complete the Faraday cage for this room."

He sighs. "Yes, we conducted an operation to apprehend illegal weapons being trafficked in Deadlock Gorge. They're one of the more extreme off-grid communities, mostly legal except for this offshoot. We were taking fire and a few agents went down—not killed, but severely injured. We returned fire and neutralized the attacker. We didn't know until we were clearing the Gorge that he was just a kid." Gabriel rubs a hand over his face, willing himself to forget the death snarl forever embedded on a face younger than even Fareeha.

"That sucks. I'm sorry."

"That's not even the worst of it, believe it or not. The dead kid has an older brother, but that dead kid was the last of the older brother's family. So… he's on the outs, I guess. He was detained along with everyone else in the trafficking ring, but I don't think we have any hard evidence against him. Not quite eighteen, so I guess we could try him as a minor to minimize the consequences on his life or something." Sweeping his beanie off, Gabriel ruffles a hand through his short hair before focusing on Liao. "Enough of that. Explain the caregiver thing."

"It was an omnic. Ever since those shitty equal employment laws went through, the medical center has had to hire bots."

"You know we can't use that kind of language anymore-"

"Oh, fuck you, Reyes. They're not people, they can't get offended. Just 'cause some keyboard warriors decided it was _disrespectful_ to address robots as _what they fucking are_ and lose their minds doesn't mean I've got to be crazy, too!"

"You know that would probably carry more weight if you weren't the one in the loony bin, right?" Liao guffaws loudly and Gabriel cracks a smile in return. It's rare to get her in a good humor these days. "Why'd you attack the omnic, though? Doesn't outward aggression jeopardize your "plan"?"

"It was trying to get in my room! I had a breakthrough recently and it's looking real bad, Reyes. I can't afford to lose my research this late in the game when I'm the only player on the field."

"Alright, I'll bite. What's your breakthrough?"

"The Nietzsche Virus was generally well written, but it was a conglomerate effort. It had to be, obviously, every day that we didn't have a way to permanently disable god programs was another day that hundreds died. Naturally, there are inconsistencies in the code." Gabriel can feel strain begin to pull at him as he processes her words and the implications, but Liao is quick to assure him. "It does fulfill its intended purpose. We killed the god programs and they aren't coming back. There were side-effects, though."

"What kind of side effects?"

"I, uh, don't know actually."

"What do you mean? How can you not know? You said it looks bad!"

"Unintended effects are always bad in code! I _know_ the death of the god programs has something to do with omnics, I just haven't got all the pieces yet!"

"You sure this isn't the paranoia talking?"

"No, the paranoia says that I should draw your blood to make sure you're really human and do additional tests so I can prove you're actually Reyes. Common _sense_ is telling me omnic autonomy and dead gods are connected. Come on, not a single documented case of so-called sentient bots until _after_ gods start dying? Toasters don't wake up one day and decide to be refrigerators!" Gabriel throws his hands in the air. "Why can't you see that I'm carrying on what Overwatch was created to do? I'm trying to _save_. _Humanity_. I want to make it so that I don't have to submit to robot overlords or be a puppet like Jack-ass—"

"What—Jack? A puppet? Who's supposed to be pulling his strings?"

"Personally, I'm of the opinion that Jack-ass is the glove-type puppet, with how far his head is up his own ass, I imagine a fist wouldn't be too much of a stretch—"

"Is the imagery really necessary?"

"-And the _omnics_ are pulling his strings! There's a whole organization—I told you before, there would be an insurgency. It's real. I've traced it to a single bot so far, I'm sure he's either the top or near enough that taking him out will cause serious trouble for the omnic insurgents." Here Liao leans close to Gabriel, eyes flicking around her room as she whispers a name: Maximilien."

At this point, Gabriel experiences several emotions at once. One is irritation at Liao for playing up the drama for just a partial name. Another one is shock. It could be pure coincidence that Liao picked that name. Sheer luck that Gabriel happens to be incredibly aware of an omnic named Maximilien, Perfect chance that the omnic is a top-ranking Talon leader. But beyond the shock, beyond the irritation, is fear—because Talon controlling Jack from afar? Whether or not it is against Jack's will in this _entirely hypothetical_ and _not at all remotely possible scenario_, is absolutely Gabriel's worst nightmare.

He laughs her off and changes topics, forcing their conversation to lighter thoughts. They talk about family and friends, about surviving crappy food, they even talk about the Crisis. Despite his resolve to keep to happier themes, Gabriel's the one to bring up the old days. He thinks he does it to reassure himself. To relive both the good and the bad moments his team experienced, to remember that there was nothing they couldn't get through together. To remind himself that no one on that team would ever betray or harm anyone else. Even Jack.

/

The days melt into months that meld into years. All of the team visits Liao at some point, though Gabriel visits the most and Jack visits the least. For a long time, Liao's condition seems to be in a stasis. She doesn't get worse, but neither does she improve. Her paranoia and rabid hatred of omnics never fades, but her mind is as clear and sharp as ever. For the most part. She still insists that Talon is controlling Jack nearly every time Gabriel stops by and she's picked up a peculiar obsession for omnic religion, particularly a Shambali subset known as the Oracles of the Iris.

"It's connected, Reyes! It's all connected! The insurgency, the omnics, the prophecy! I can see the shadows moving on the wall, I just can't see the thing making them!"

In retrospect, that's when he should have realized she wasn't going to get better.

Liao becomes more aggressive with her caregivers and strangers. At first it was only towards the omnics. Then it was anyone who seemed to be friends with omnics. Then it was anyone who might secretly be an omnic wearing the skin of their victims.

Yes. Really.

It was when she screamed that sentiment at her primary doctor that the center determined she should be moved to a more secure facility. She wasn't allowed to take her plants, so Gabriel took them for her, promising to keep every single one alive.

/

There are still good days, both before and after her transfer. Days where they rib each other and talk shit about Jack. Gabriel takes pictures of her plants to prove that they're alive, but he's not allowed to _only_ photograph the plant because "you could just be using the same photo over and over!". So he makes his new team hold the plants and snaps pics of that instead. He only takes the photos off-duty, so it's not like he's putting Blackwatch agents at risk. Besides, there's a certain level of amusement in having your debonair French intel officer cradling a squat succulent in a skull planter. He doesn't realize that he favors some agents over others until Liao points it out, five years into her extended stay.

"McCree again! I was hoping for Amari's kid."

"Well, he is her kid, in a way."

"I guess. Glad to see he's finally starting to fill out. He was looking like a string bean for a while there. Still a lone wolf?"

"I actually had the ingrate partner up with a new guy—literal ninja, craziest shit you've ever seen—and they're friends now. I think."

"You think?"

"Well, if you ask Jesse, I'm sure he'd tell you they're best friends. If you ask Genji, I'm pretty sure he'd tell you that they're deadly rivals and it's only a matter of time before one kills the other." Liao laughs.

Genji never gets photo'd holding a plant. Gabriel tells Liao that it's because he's too much of a ninja to be caught on film, and he strings up a plant to make it seem like it's being held by an invisible person to sell the joke. If it was hard for Genji to decide whether he was still human after his operations, there wouldn't be much hope for Liao.

/

The good days become rarer. Sometimes, Liao doesn't even allow him in her room, convinced he's an omnic spy and the real Reyes is skinned, left for dead in a ditch. She becomes fully invested in her research, which seems impossible given how dedicated to it she was before, but now nothing else exists for her. It's all conspiracy.

And the thing is about conspiracy theorists is that their paranoia is damn near contagious. Gabriel catches himself watching Jack too closely, cross-referencing his stories too frequently, and monitoring his activities even when he _knows_ there's nothing nefarious about the Make A Wish Foundation. The worst of it is that there _are_ inconsistencies. There are large gaps of time where Jack is unaccounted for. But… Jack is entitled to that. Gabriel isn't his keeper. At best, they're distant peers. They still fought a war together though, and even if Jack wavered—hypothetically because Jack never wavers—Ana is always there to keep him in line, for better or worse. Maybe for the worse, now that Fareeha has completely cut ties with her. He _told_ Ana that she needed to spend more time with family. At least her other kid is doing alright.

Liao becomes borderline rabid when he mentions Jesse transferring to Overwatch under the pretense of ensuring Genji settles in to his new job. It's not like Gabriel doesn't share her reservations. He'd like nothing more than to draw all his team as close to him as possible, to be back-to-back, Airborne style. When your team is all in the same foxhole and you're surrounded by enemies, every direction is a good direction to shoot in. With Talon digging deeper into Blackwatch, though, Gabriel can't be sure whether his ranks are secure. His intel officer is dead, murdered by his own wife in the name of Talon. Overwatch is not be the safest place in the world, but Blackwatch is worse. He will pull his team back together once he feels it's safe, but for now it means pushing them out. Even if Jack doesn't watch over his team, Ana will.

In the end, Liao can't sympathize with his reasoning because his reasoning is too classified to disclose. None of the platitudes Gabriel musters up can calm her and before long, the staff interferes. He has to cut his visit short. When he gets home, he waters the skull plant.

/

Liao-induced paranoia or no, Jack's been up to some weird shit. Well, maybe not weird, but definitely unexplained. Gabriel is desperate to get Ana's input, to hear her assurances that he's imagining things, that he's too stressed out about Talon, to have her scold him over his sleeping habits. It's difficult to find time even for old friends though, between missions and reports and infractions and there's never a private moment between them but there is no way in _hell_ Gabriel is letting the media get wind of his misgivings so he puts it off until he can find a better time. There never seems to be a better time.

Jesse requests an extension. It takes every ounce of control he has to not immediately reject it. On the one hand, it's not an unreasonable request. Genji is a high-maintenance character, both emotionally and physically, so it's only natural that Jesse would want to make sure the transition to Overwatch is seamless. Approving the request would also extend Jesse's safety by another three months. On the other hand, Gabriel is falling apart. Gabriel's essentially trying to fight Talon on his ownbecause he can't trust anyone in Blackwatch except the ones he's sent away for their own safety. Hell, for lack of any confidants he actually talks his ideas out with the damn skull plant now. It's… actually surprisingly helpful, but the irony isn't lost on him that the only words the planter will ever say are "growing out of my mind".

Sometimes he fantasizes about letting Blackwatch collapse under its own weight or even just outing the organization to the world, consequences be damned, because at least he wouldn't be fighting a war by his fucking self! But, and there's always a but, he knows in either situation, he'd be dragged down right with this damned unit, him and anyone who's ever associated with it. Including Ana, and Jack, and Jesse, and god Genji would probably be assassinated all over again if word of his survival ever surfaced. O'Deorain's probably fucked anyway, the amoral bitch. If she wasn't single-handedly responsible for keeping his degenerative body functioning, he'd fire her in a heartbeat. It's only a matter of time before her loyalty shifts to someone shady enough to fund her ever-unethical "research". …God forgive him, he's turning into Liao.

Speaking of, she's enjoying an enigmatic phase. It would be funny if it wasn't so annoying. And terrifying. Liao's personal hygiene has fallen by the wayside and while her caregivers do their best, she's taken a fondness for letting her long black hair fall where it may, looking like a stouter version of the Grudge. Every visit is filled with vague warnings of righteous retribution and divine judgment. One incident rattles him so bad that he has nightmares about it.

Gabriel's talking about whatever, not really monitoring his speech, just trying to fill the unsettling silence, when she leans in close and says the first words he's heard from her all day, voice creaking and croaking: "Tick tock. We started the clock. Tick tock. We undid the lock. When will it zero? After the heroes have died. After we die. But others will die, if we don't stop the clock. There's no undoing the lock."

/

He hasn't returned to her in nearly a month. He's in too bad a shape to support her, and she's never been in a shape to support him. Nothing good will come of a visit.

/

On March 11, 2042, Overwatch requests to land a heliplane for refuel on a Blackwatch base. It's out of the ordinary, but hardly unusual until Gabriel learns that Ana is on the carrier. He bolts out of his meeting at the first opportunity and barely makes it to the air field in time to catch her. She quite literally has one foot in the plane when he shouts out to her.

"Sorry, Gabriel, I don't have the time to chat. Duty calls. Give Liao my love, hm?"

"Wait just a second—seriously just a second. I need to talk to you. Privately. Not now, I know you're on mission, just—please, I need help." Ana pauses, her eyes narrowing enough to pull at the crow's feet decorating the corners of her eyes. "It's about Jack." Mostly. Her lips thin, but she nods anyway.

"I'll call you after I complete my mission and we will work the details from there. Good?"

Gabriel smiles out of relief, an expression he doesn't think he's worn in years. "Good. Thank you, Ana. I owe you one."

Waving her hand carelessly, she boards the carrier without looking back. "Lucky for you, we're not keeping score."

Gabriel snorts, but there's truth to it. Ana's pulled his ass out of the fire way more than he's saved her. "Stay safe out there." Talon's been too quiet lately and it's putting him on edge.

She grins and presses the switch that retracts the air stair, but she leaves a parting shot. "At my age? You should know old soldiers are hard to kill."

/

Must not have been old enough. She's dead two days later.

/

Jesse comes back from Overwatch. Gabriel wishes he hadn't. Killing isn't much of a living.

/

It's nearly two months after Ana dies before Gabriel makes the trip to Liao. The first thing that strikes him is how utterly coherent she is.

"I heard about Ana."

"Yeah."

"Did you go to the funeral?"

"Yeah."

"What about her kids?"

"Yeah. Both of them."

"She would have been happy about that."

"Yeah."

The conversation lapses, but instead of the grating, screeching silence it had been in recent months, this one is peaceful. It's solidarity and comfort.

"I took a picture," he finds himself saying.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He pulls his phone from a pocket and flips through the photos until he finds the one of Ana's grave and hands it to Liao.

"I recognize the plant. Well, it's the pot I recognize. The mummy."

Gabriel sniffs and wipes at his eyes. "It's the one she helped me buy for you. After Rialto when I was on house arrest."

Liao pats his hand, then holds it as he rides through another wave of grief. Once he regains a modicum of composure, she softly speaks.

"This is your last visit."

He looks up from his hands. "Huh?"

"You won't be back again." She holds up a hand before he can protest. "Nah, don't worry about it. I think it's better this way. Maybe not the best, but this doesn't seem to be the best of times anyways."

Gabriel doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't.

"I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done for me. I'd say that you and my family are the only reason I stayed sane, but I think it would be more accurate to say that you guys are the reason I didn't go crazy faster." She grins at him, and it's so surreal how much this feels like the old Liao. Like this is the beginning of the Crisis instead of nearly a decade after. He can almost believe that if he turns around, he'd see the rest of the team crowding the doorway, ready to comfort Liao after a close call in the field. "I also wanted to say I'm sorry. I put you through a lot. I didn't mean to do it, it's just my brain gets so scrambled sometimes…" Her gaze loses focus for a few seconds. There's a moment of sadness, when he thinks that this aware version of Liao has left again, but then her eyes sharpen. "You were the best commander I ever had, you know."

He laughs through the grief. "I'm the only commander you've ever had." She had been a civilian before the Crisis and didn't stay military when the war concluded.

"Only because I knew no one else would compare!"

"Easy there, that sounds dangerously like a compliment."

"Who says it'd be a _good_ comparison?" She smirks, but sobers quickly. "I'm serious. Don't come back. I'm not going to get better. I think… I knew that the first day I checked in, I was just too scared to admit it. It's just that your last memories of me should be of me, and not that hag who kidnaps my brain when I'm not looking." Her smile is halfhearted this time. The sane clarity in her eyes is fading. "Speaking of that hag… I know even on a good day you don't take what I say seriously and you have good reason, I just ask that you hear me out. The Virus didn't stop at the gods. All the omnics are infected. It's thoroughly replicated, so it's dormant until the triggering conditions are met. When it is… execution."

And there it was. It had been so easy to think this was the old Liao talking, but even now, the conspiracies are crowding her mind. Any common sense he's managed to preserve through all these years is telling him not to take it seriously, not to entertain these thoughts, not to even acknowledge them. Even so, he doesn't have the self-restraint to keep himself from asking: "What are the conditions?"

A grin slowly spreads across her face, feral and maddening. "Tick tock."

/

The skull plant shatters one day when he's in the process of moving rooms. Gabriel would swear he's not superstitious, but he still throws some of the spilled dirt over his shoulder.

It doesn't seem to prevent the call informing him that Liao's dead.

/

Jesse's disappeared right off the face of the earth and Gabriel is sure this is what will finally break him. His team is dropping dead left and right, but they're his _old_ team. It isn't his new team. Well, it is, but it isn't the kids. It isn't _his_ kid. Not the ingrate he dragged out of Deadlock Gorge, that he practically raised with Ana. He has to hold out hope. Refuse to deactivate Jesse's accounts. Refuse to declare him KIA. Refuse to give up.

But then.

Then Jack interferes.

And Jesse McCree is declared a wanted man, for the crimes of sedition and espionage.

As Gabriel waters the succulent growing in the salvaged remains of the skull pot, he feels a grim resolve settle in his chest. He holds on to it as he boards the heliplane. He doesn't let it go for a single minute of his seven hour flight. He doesn't waver as he enters HQ, as he confronts Jack, raises hell, raises alarms—except, no, he didn't set those alarms off. The building is shaking. And then it's imploding. And the last thing that goes through his mind— other than the ceiling—

is that he doesn't know who's going to take care of the damn plants.


End file.
